How do you balance your own dreams and ambitions with those of the collective good? The collective good being: your family, your people, and for those so inclined, society as a whole. How do you balance any dreams with the reality of a failed attempt? How do you move forward when life seems stalled or worse yet muted?

When I was a kid I thought anything was possible. I was living in low standards (in quality of life, expectations, and interaction) that I drew up my own world of existence. When I try to recall memories, many of them are of me just sitting, lying, standing – alone, lost in thought. A loud buzzing is in my ears as I lose track of time and wake from my fantasy to find that hours and sometimes only seconds have passed.

The hours spent dreaming were my escape from my life. My time spent reading and writing were a respite from admitting where/when I was living.

And in these dreams with limitless skies I saw myself as an attorney, as a businesswoman, as an inventor – with an empire that would spread its wings in Boyle Heights and provide a higher quality of life to its residents: to teenage moms, to boys on the cusp of being lost to drugs/gangs/apathy, to immigrant parents providing for a better life. I dreamt of a world where I wrote my way to the top, sharing my stories, and then my profits to this community. Buying a beautiful house for my parents and siblings; making enough money so my parents could stop their backbreaking work; financing the education of my siblings so they could escape the soul crunching cycle of poverty; realizing these goals would make me happy I thought.

Yet along the way my heart wasn’t strong enough, my mind became weaker, and I dreamt longer and longer. My escape became a necessity and I would lose track of time, lose track of my goals and ambitions, until I just lived. I breathed, I ate, I woke and I slept. I loved with an immature sense of what this meant or what it would bring.

And those goals became silly notions meant for another. My self-questioning became louder, a feverish pitch of self-doubt that drowned out any positive thoughts and immobilized my inner sense of worth.

A failed marriage, an unaccomplished degree, and single motherhood at 23.

It seemed the only dream I had “accomplished” which I couldn’t even take credit for was growing into an attractive woman. As a child, I had wished daily to be beautiful, graceful, to possess the ease of human interaction – the ability to connect and feel with others, but this desire was misguided as I did not know the difference between healthy and unhealthy connections in relationships.

I was in a downward spiral that was quickly finding its way to the bottom. I had no sense of where I could go from there, of what life meant anymore if not my definition of a perfect loveable family.

But with pain, failure, and darkness comes revelation. You cannot hide from yourself when all that is left is you.

So I took the shreds of my motivation and began a painstakingly slow mending process. I recognized my faults, which were many, and realized that no matter how sympathetic a past I had, it did not constitute an excuse for where I had landed.

And 5 years later you find me here, full of life.

I didn’t give up on life. I placed one foot in front of the other and though I had many missteps, I keep walking forward. And I feel a sense of pride in my life; I have two young daughters that grow lovelier every day, I have a career that I enjoy and brings me a sense of fulfillment, and I am ready to go back to my restarting those childhood dreams – even if that only means coloring the life of my loved ones with my happiness.

We can spend days philosophizing about what true happiness means and what we need to possess it. We can spend an equal amount of time debating whether the singular task of making ourselves happy contributes to the improved happiness of the collective; I believe that it does. By being a happy mother, daughter, sister, friend, and partner I am bringing that positivity into the lives of those connected to me. By sharing my stories, I hope you feel the hope that has carried me through daily and how this hope has changed as I have gotten older. I once thought happiness would come when I married and had children, a family to love me and receive my love.

But I learned that you can’t smother the darkness, you can’t swallow the bitter memories, you can’t hide from the gray that is nestled inside you and lures you into endless sleep; you have to face it in order to bring a sense of peace and happiness into your own being.

Imagine that you are in your dark hole, surrounded by darkness that eats at your perceived happiness away, that chips at your will to live, that hammers you down when you try to move forward, that suffocates you when you try to take a breath of hopeful air. You are left slumped on the ground choking on the hurt, the pain is so strong it keeps you pinned to the floor and no matter how hard you try to ignore it; the ringing in your ears makes it impossible for you to function at a higher level than mere existence. It becomes a sub existence and time passes by, passing you by.

But there is a ladder amongst this darkness. Barely visible at first but you feel it with your hands as you wander around unrelenting in your desire to escape. Each rung on that ladder brings you a different memory – a painful shameful moment in your life; and in order to move past a rung you have to come to terms with it and the implications it has caused in your life.

If you were abused, you need to know that you did nothing to invite this undeserved attack onto yourself. There is nothing wrong with you. You do not have something in you that can elicit this behavior in others toward you. You may have been repeatedly abused, by many, but you need to realize that it is not your fault. You were a victim but over time and with a lot of work you can heal and stop living like one.

Whatever hard reality was or is your life you have two choices, same as anyone else; climb the ladder or cower in the false safety of your known darkness. Don’t beat yourself up for decisions and choices you made, even if you ended up hurting others. You have to learn to forgive yourself and push forward. If you don’t, your “reality” (your self-inflicted continuation of that twisted world) will always remain your captor.

I’m not credentialed to tell you how to get better, I can only share what I have gone through and have done to get to a better place. One thing I can tell you, when you climb high enough up that ladder, you will savor the ease with which you keep climbing and you will begin to shed your old tattered self and embrace the new stronger, happier, and more productive self.

I am not at the top of the ladder; I don’t know what I will find when I get there. But I do know that I am relishing the journey upward and that I am improving this world a little with my own sunshine brightening this beautiful new day.

The glow of the downtown skyline below me, so close I can almost step over the edge of the hill and walk over to it, but such a distant world from me.

I look down at my evergreen ribbed sweater top and pull the sleeves over my tight knuckles and crouch down near the dead grass. The cool air feels good against my cheeks. The frost is coming, I can feel the weather turn as it nips at my cheeks and the edges of my ears. But the burning of my eyes from all of the crying is all I can feel at this moment; the ugliness of the most recent fight still weighs me down and forms a pit in my stomach.

The cramping in my legs forces me to get up and as I inhale sharply I realize I haven’t been breathing. I keep doing this; suspending reality and letting time slip by as I fall into my non-dream world. I can’t even tell you what I think or don’t think about during these moments, but it scares me that I kept doing it more and more. A series of unaccountable non-moments is preferable to the waking moments that I keep walking back to.

We lived in a tiny two room illegal unit carved into the side of a cliff and had to walk twenty steps up and down each time I would ascend or descend into our out of our self-created hell. I opened the door and found him sitting by the dining table, mirror red-rimmed vacant eyes looking right back at me. I don’t bother to acknowledge his presence and walk past him into the bedroom. How depressing these walls are, seemingly pushing in all around me, inching closer and closer with each passing day.

We thought we had been happy once but when I try to think of what we spoke of, of what we shared in thoughts and likes, or even if we relayed dislikes, I can’t come up with a single conversation we had.

Wherever we’d go, they would ask if we were siblings. Tall, with dark thick hair, lightly bronzed skin, and striking features – there’s worse to be compared to. I don’t think we saw anything beyond each other, at least nothing real, other than skin deep. I thought I saw a shared pained past, an inner struggle to contain demons, a desire to move forward and work towards a new life with each other. The last one is what bit me in the ass, that was just a projected shared trait, a one-sided fantasy that never took any real root in our relationship.

I didn’t drink then. That wasn’t until I wanted to drown out the pain of failure.

He didn’t drink much either, I figured (hoped) he didn’t like it and only did it socially but it quickly became apparent that it wasn’t the case once we were married. Once we were married… How could it change so drastically?

Back in the bedroom I changed into a t-shirt and crept into bed. As I heard the sound of the light switch flick off I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep. I heard his shuffling as he stepped out of his clothes and slipped in beside me and I concentrated on willing myself to sleep. As the bed shook from his silent sobbing I squeezed my eyes tightly and gripped the blanket so my eyes wouldn’t accidentally give me away. But as I felt him slither towards me I quickly fell into my non-dream moments and slipped away..

We would talk for hours every day. You begged me to draw for you, to write for you and recite the stories to you at night. We were One when you let the words of your poems slowly slide down my body, caress every inch of my damaged soul, and heal me with your dancing eyes.

I would get caught up on the lovely song of your voice and slip off into our world. I would lay on my bed with my legs propped up against the wall, let my head hang off the side of the bed so the blood rushing to my face would add to the happy high that you brought to me every time your whispers blew in my ear.

I close my eyes and see your sharp features; the razor sharp lines that made up your jaw and chin, your eyes – jagged lines resting on your cheekbones, and your mouth always in a crooked smile when you saw me. Always kissing me softly and whispering what a beautiful and perfect being I was.

I hadn’t seen you in days and I missed you. You sensed it and told me, “Susana, you and I are special. This universe is full of darkness with the blind shuffling amongst each other in a fruitless journey but I have you, You are my light. We are two lights amongst the darkness and we will dance together wherever we may be, however long we may part, we will never lose each other. We are two lights shining brightly for each other.”

I smiled into the receiver, pressing the phone closer to my lips and ear so I could feel you. Your hands always on my body, feeling delectably cool to the touch and soft against my teenage skin.

“You are on an altar and you will never fall in my eyes. You are an Aztec princess, with rich beautiful brown melanin and silky skin, you are my perfect kindness. I will always love you.”

I could never respond, I could never tell you how I felt. But I willed the love outwards, hoping that you would feel the force of my loyalty to you, my admiration for you.
Your words come back to me and they make me smile as if time never lapsed, as if you haven’t been in the ground for years. But your face remains intact with the softness of youth while I have aged over a decade.

For countless nights I woke up to the lingering kiss from my dreams, searching for your lips to brush up against mine once more. Your smile, the twinkling of your eyes, the endless wonder you held me in, the unbridled love you showered me with; what are they now but ghosts of yesterday?

How could you have forgotten your promise to always light my way? How could you have chosen instead to walk in darkness like the others?

The numbness you succumbed to daily took you away from me long before you left my arms forever. You wanted so much. You wanted all of me; you lived inside my thoughts, heart, and quickened flow of blood and still that was not enough. You understood that I could not bring myself to give all of me but that did not stop the pain it caused you.

And you thought I gave up on you. You thought you weren’t good enough for me. No matter the kisses, the embraces, the boundaries I broke daily for you; you could not believe that I loved you as you uninhibitedly loved me.

You allowed it to consume you; your eyes started to lose their depth and your laughter became an echo that I was left to chase.

You left me before you were gone and I could not, did not, rise up to the challenge to bring you back. I did not fight hard enough for you. I should have pulled harder, called harder for you to push temptation away. Instead I allowed you to slip away into a living sleep.